Steganography is a technical field relating to the embedding of data into material such as video material, audio material and data material in such a way that the data is imperceptible in the material.
Watermarks are data embedded in material such as video material, audio material and data material. A watermark may be imperceptible or perceptible in the material.
A watermark may be used for various purposes. It is known to use watermarks for the purpose of protecting the material against, or trace, infringement of the intellectual property rights of the owner(s) of the material. For example a watermark may identify the owner of the material.
Watermarks may be “robust” in that they are difficult to remove from the material. Robust watermarks are useful to trace the provenance of material which is processed in some way either in an attempt to remove the mark or to effect legitimate processing such as video editing or compression for storage and/or transmission. Watermarks may be “fragile” in that they are easily damaged by processing which is useful to detect attempts to remove the mark or process the material.
Visible watermarks are useful to allow, for example, a customer to view an image via, for example, the Internet to determine whether they wish to buy it but without allowing the customer access to the unmarked image they would buy. The watermark degrades the image and the mark is preferably not removable by the customer. Visible watermarks are also used to determine the provenance of the material into which they are embedded.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,369 (Cox et al) it has been proposed to embed data into material information, such as images, to form a watermark, by converting the material into a transform domain and adding the data to the image in the transform domain. For the example of video images, the Discrete Wavelet Transform of these images into the transform domain, provides a form of the image in which the data can be embedded. The data to be embedded can be combined with the wavelet coefficients of one of a plurality of sub-bands which are formed in the transform domain. Generally, the data to be embedded is arranged to modulate a predetermined data sequence such as a Pseudo Random Bit Sequence (PRBS). For example, each bit of the data to be embedded is arranged to modulate a copy of the PRBS, and this copy is then added into one of the sub-bands of the image in the transform domain. The image is then converted back to the spatial domain.
Generally it is desirable in any steganographic scheme to reduce the effect of the embedded data on the material information in which the data is embedded, whilst as far as possible increasing the likelihood of correctly detecting the embedded data. For the example of video images, this represents reducing as far as possible a perceptible degradation of the image, whilst increasing the likelihood of correctly detecting the data.